pictures from Lily

No time to write except photo captions.

Thrin-lé.

Khandro Déchen.

Bag o' chilies.

Laughing faces with bad teeth.

Robert.

Suicidal dogs.

Druktsal.

Viveka shopping for fabric.

Sanjay, former shoeshine boy, now shoeshine tycoon.

People waiting for a bus that never came. They were supposed to go to Yang-lé-shöd to the Padmasambhava caves but Something Happened and our bus couldn't get here because people were throwing stones at it and there was a big fire in the road as part of some sort of protest or riot. We heard that someone had been run over by a bus and there was a big protest but we also heard that some political leader had been assassinated in prison and that's what it was about. I have no idea if either or both of these stories are true.

Ja-zér and Sonam's daughter Elaia.

Tsül'dzin.

Maria.

Me blogging in the guest house courtyard, taken by 'ö-Dzin.

visiting hours

I have tried, no less than 5 times, to post a description of my breakfast with Khandro Ten'dzin Drölkar wearing longjohns - me, that is, wearing the longjohns. She arrived at our room around 8am, escorted by Mé-sèl, who had run into her in the street, accompanied by her brother-in-law who speaks English (somewhat). That is normal Tibetan visiting hours in Bodha. She used to come around 7am but has probably accommodated herself to decadent Western habits.

She brought hard-boiled eggs, chapatis, and a huge thermos of sweet tea. I was wearing a white turtleneck shirt and long underwear, which I wear under my robes because it's cold here unless you're standing in a direct path to the sun with nothing in between you and it.


Khandro Ten'dzin Drölkar always comes to see Pema Zangmo when she's here, and Pema Zangmo is sharing a room with me. Pema Zangmo had been wondering if she would even be able to see Khandro Ten'dzin Drölkar on this trip. She usually just runs into her around the chörten. She had written when she was coming but it turned out the letter had gotten lost. Pema Zangmo and Khandro Ten'dzin Drölkar have been friends for many years.

No one seemed to care that I was wearing my underwear so I didn't either. We ate eggs and chapatis and made awkward conversation. It was nice to see her, it always is, but it was even better to see her with Pema Zangmo. They kept smiling at each other.

final total: 66

Oy. All sorts of tedious technical problems: intermittent wifi, disappearing posts, having to reinstall the blog app 6 times, and much much more. However I am still taking lots of pictures so I'll put up some of those, with explanations.


Claire, wearing robes for the first time. She came to my room for help in putting on her shamthab and when I demonstrated, Pema Zangmo told me I was doing it wrong because I only had one fold in the front. Who knew. There are others among the pre-ordained getting a taste of wearing robes here and if the tailor hurries up and finishes some orders there will soon be more. Our group has gone fairly bonkers about tailoring, with new arrivals literally running to the shop to get their orders in immediately.


Just before 30 people arrived on the 15th the guest house put up a tent to hold a heater and more tables for us to use during breakfast. The furniture has been moved out of the lobby and it's now filled with tables and more tables to hold the food. What we get for breakfast each day is hard-boiled eggs, chapatis, some kind of sweet bread or pancakes, butter, cheese, honey, jam, peanut butter and yogurt with bananas in it. There are bananas all over the place here for some reason, though I can't imagine they're grown locally.

Lots of people arrived on the 15th, some of them, like Garwang, wearing the new fancy robe boots.

A bunch of us assembled in the guest house lobby to wait for Rinpoche and Khandro Déchen and their party, who arrived somewhere around 10pm.

Finally, they appeared. Bar-ché went over to the Double Dorjee and got them some chow mein. The guest house supplied beer, tea and water.

Rig'dzin arrived wearing a replica of Brad Pitt's jacket from Fight Club that he got on eBay.

People waiting for breakfast to begin.

Mé-sèl with Martine, who, along with her husband, owns and runs the guest house.

Raechel found one of the cats.

Isabelle, taking the air situation seriously.

Santeri (autofill tried to make that Santeria) with his teng'ar strung on five-colored string which he describes as "infested with mantra".

Rig'dzin and I ran into Ngakpa Jig'mèd, whom I first met on the 1998 'Three Witches' pilgrimage.

Another interesting encounter.

Lots of colored flags for some local festival.

More tomorrow, I hope.

more testing

testing, testing

This is a test. I'm having trouble posting pictures so I wondered if just text would work.

new meat

Today a bunch more people arrived, and the ones who had been staying at the Lotus Guesthouse (aka Little Britain) moved into the Valley Guesthouse with the rest of us. Here are some more pictures.

the crying girl

This is Lékyi and Métsal at the Nir Café, or the Toast Bakery, or the Nir Toast Bakery, or something. They have interesting bread that looks like Western bread but still tastes like incense or flowers combined with garlic. They also have a fab fresh fruit salad one can eat with impunity. It has pomegranate seeds in it, which indicates that labor is cheap here (which it is) or else we're in the Underworld.

The Nir Café is at the end of a dark alley or arcade. Several times, when coming or going from the restaurant we are accosted by a girl who looks about eight years old. She's crying and she will only stop crying after she has hugged and been hugged by all the women in our group and sometimes the men as well. Sometimes she starts crying again and everybody has to hug her again. She seems particularly obsessed with hugging round shaped women so I come in for a lot of this.



After a while a small Western woman with henna'd hair and a Tibetan jacket shows up and leads her away. But she usually starts crying again and has to hug everybody all over again. I can't figure out what nationality she is but she has very shiny, fine, curly hair and a round face. Indian maybe? I don't know. She seems stuck in some permanent misery. She gives these desperate but somehow perfunctory hugs. I don't have a picture of her because I find I don't want to initiate any interaction with her.

This is a group of people waiting for some other people to be ready to go to dinner.